We fished the wild Chinook opener on the lower Skagit. From noon to about 4:30 we fished various slots out of the Gardner Bar launch. We offered wrapped quickfish, spinners, magnum wiggle warts and even herring and nobody was interested in our offerings. About 6:00 we launched at Blakes down in the tide water, then ran downstream and fished a number of 20-25’ slots. Again offering wrapped quickfish, herring and spinners with no takers.

Although we had a wonderful day on the water the fishing was less than stellar. There were no fish rolling and we never saw a fish on the meter. As we were pulling out of the water at Blake’s we talked to the WSFG biologist and he said there was one fish caught in the whole system. A jack was caught up at the pipeline in SW. There was a lot of speculation that the gillnets cleaned out the lower river. I am not sure if that is the case and I think that we may be early in the run. If the fish were in the area they would have been moving into the river with the high tide and that didn’t happen. They will come...

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